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It's strange when I think back to that early press screening of GE and can recall being a bit undecided, possibly even underwhelmed, on whether I thought it good or bad and how the critics would react to this new Bond. Despite my own reservations, the UK critics loved it and lavished praise on it. One critic, Geoff Brown of The Times even said '...Bond gets to work in his tailored clothing, you feel Schwarzenegger and Stallone shrivelling...He is undoubtedly the best Bond since Sean Connery". Yep, those best since Connery qoutes DID exist about Brosnan back then. One hugely influential and respected critic by the name of Alexander Walker even went so far as to claim Brosnan had ripped the lid off Bond's coffin and revived its corpse!
I also agree with @Getafix on GE being chock-full of British TV talent, just as much as LTK is with American TV talent. Despite what some people say here, it was just as notable for UK audiences that the pool of acting talent came from TVland as maybe it was for the Americans previously. The argument can't be used against LTK and not GE without, in all honesty, sounding either disingenuous or uninformed.
Good post @bondsum. I suppose Im just so used to seeing the likes of Judi Dench, Robbie Coltrane and Sean Bean in major films. The cast of GE obviously made the transition from small screen to big screen much more successfully than that of LTK. Other than obviously Benico Del Toro I haven't seen the rest of the cast in that many films.
When I saw TLD on the big screen back in july, the "Salt corrosion" line got the biggest laugh. "The better make that two" got a few laughs. None of them fell flat.
GE got laughs too though. Anyway I maybe wrong.
Dalton is an actor. There is no such thing as film actor, tv actor or theatre actor. An actor gets work where they can. British actors are a different breed to American movie stars.
Have you seen Dalton in Jane Eyre or Framed? He has incredible presence. Most famous actors agree that he is a fine actor.
True some actors are more famous than others. But popularity does not equal quality. Vin DIesel anyone.
Dalton is a niche actor. He does not bend over for a mainstream audience. Dalton is more like Rules restaurant in London than Mc Donalds, which the latter must be better as it is so much more popular wink wink
Someone once said and I think it was Connery that said you can't act Bond, you have to be Bond.
I don't the TV history is the thing. Dalton's style didn't appeal to many audiences. I really do appreciate and enjoy Dalton despite being in my opinion the least successful Bond to date.
Lazenby just tried his best to be Connery not so much Bond. But he still wasn't stiff.
Dalton was playing the Bond of the novels. He is in the books the more acid variety as opposed to be sugary.
Dalton is an actor which requires an audience to look beneath the surface. Some can do that and get it. I give him credit for bringing something new and fresh to the role, knowing that it was going to receive criticism. That takes cajones!
The Bond franchise needs to take risks to remain relevant. The cliches are exactly what will put the nails in the coffin eventually. Nothing is worse than copying the past or what came before. Dalton created a question mark and arguably is the most controversial actor. Ironically, he has created a sub-genre of the character and he is more appreciated now than almost thirty years ago.
Well said.
Thank you sir. Those who denigrate Dalton for being too serious, praise Craig for similar qualities. Craig is a mixture of Connery and Dalton.
Dalton did gritty first and was ahead of his time. He played Bond as an acting role at a time when audiences wanted the Moore/Brosnan variety. The eighties was a decade not yet ready for a harsher reality 007. Dalton was seen as crazy for not playing the easy going playboy of the decade of excess!
After 9/11 and the popularity of the Bourne films, the cultural climate changed to accept Craig's brutal interpretation. Craig too would have been hated had he took over from Roger Moore in 1987!
Had that interpretation worked we may have grasped a grittier Bond. In fact the rest of our heroes were so no I think we would or could have been ready given the right execution and charisma.
Craig on the other hand is also a more serious Bond but beyond CR I'm not sure how much of Fleming's Bond is on actually on screen.
Dalton played Bond very close to the Fleming incarnation. Dalton gave a splendid execution of the character. There are experts who agree on that. Even GQ Magazine gives Dalton the credit for totally changing the perception of Bond.
You cannot tell me the audience who lapped up the Brosnan era were looking for serious/realistic Bond. Up until the Bourne films, the general public wanted.a surface level Bond who was a more comedic character.
Read the Fleming novels and then tell me where Dalton fell flat. Raymond Benson the Bond novelist said Dalton was closest tio Fleming.
I've always believed that one has to inhabit the Bond persona on film. That is unique to each actor and it must be an extension of the actor's personality in my view. You can't really act it, unless you are exceptional, or some (like myself) will pick up on it.
I commend Dalton for bringing his unique interpretation to the role that was an extension of himself. It's when he tried to go outside that and more towards the formulaic 'Bond film persona' that I didn't feel all that comfortable with his portrayal.
I feel the same was about Craig and what he tried to do in SP to a degree. He is acting formula Bond and it fell relatively flat to me in places (although still good enough). Same for Brosnan for the most part.
Strangely, I never felt that way about Lazenby, which surprises me because he had no real acting training. Connery/Moore were just an extension of themselves and it was very natural on screen.
There is definitely growing appreciation for Dalton as Bond now.
But people actually exaggerate his lack of popularity in the 80s. If you read the reviews from the time they were actually really quite positive. TLD was very well received by critics, and LTK got some excellent reviews, even in the US. Even if reviewers weren't keen on the films, they were often very positive about Dalton's performance.
The Dalton films were also fairly decent commercial performers. EON and the studio made good money on both of them and LTK did decent BO outside of the U.S.
I think the fact that LTK was a much grittier and darker Bond movie and that it ended up being Dalton's last has just overshadowed his legacy. It was a 15 in the UK, which means there was a whole group of kids who never got to see it in the cinema. EON knew that was a mistake. Dalton, who had virtually no creative control whatsoever, made it clear that he wanted his third film to be a lot more lifhthearted.
Had Dalton done even one more Bond film, that was more in line with TLD or just a bit lighter, then I think his immediate legacy would have been very different.
I also think there is an extent to which people conflate the darkness of LTK, the poor BO in the US and the six year delay, and sort of think this was all due to Dalton. The fact is that apart (perhaps) from the U.S. box office, none of this had anything to with Dalton and was just bad timing.
I agree with you 100% Dalton got blamed by the general media for the six year gap. You @getafix know your history well. Craig was panned for QOS and then the studio bankrupcy cancelled his third film temporarily. An almost parallel situation. Luckily for Craig the production of his third film was ignited again.
My point is that had Craig finished with QOS, a film that has been unfairly maligned, he would be in the same position as Dalton.
For the record, I believe QOS was his best film. It was a great story and has none of the tick boxing elements that his two subsequent films have.
The minute I saw Craig adjusting his cufflinks in the pts of SF, I knew we were in trouble. QOS was a take no prisoners performance by him, which I put way above SF and SP.
I thought that in QOS, he was in his own universe, without that distracting Aston DB5 to remind people it still is a Bond film. SF to me was another reboot, to apologise for QOS which was a mistake. They had the perfect tone for Craig in QOS. No looking back, but, moving forward.
Very good point. Yes, Craig could easily have fallen into a similar trap, especially if he'd been a few years older when he was originally cast. By SF EON and the studio might have been looking at a recast.
I am also a big fan of QOS and really enjoyed the lack of box ticking. Makes for a very fresh feeling Bond movie.
I did enjoy SP a lot though, even though it does rely on a lot of rather lazy cliches and is almost completely backward looking.
Going back to your original point though, it is also interesting to think what Moore's reputation would have been if he'd only done LALD and GG. Not great I suspect. It's amazing what Laz gave us with one film and Dalton with two - they both deserve a lot of respect and appreciation for what they did.
The only actors whose reputations might have benefitted from doing fewer films are actually Connery and Brosnan. I personally quite like Connery's performance in DAF but would have loved a proper Lazenby revenge follow up to OHMSS.
And you probably know my views on Brosnan - less would definitely have been more in his case. The fewer Brosnan Bond movies the better as far as I'm concerned. Had he only done GE his reputation might be quite high, although I could never understand the love that dreary little film gets.
But that's my opinion. True the Brosnan films were popular but that's because he was at least entertaining to watch and besides Bond hadn't pushed his limits yet until CR.
I appreciate fans of Dalton. I do like him. I do wish he had had better to work with and oddly enough he might have done well in GE.
Audiences though would have stayed away in droves.
Agreed sir! With Bond sometimes less is Moore. But, apparently some fans judge on quantity of films done than actual quality. Sir Christopher Lee said you cannot dismiss an actor's contribution ; just because they did one or two films. He was referring that both Lazenby and Dalton contributed to the series. Being Ian Fleming's cousin, I think he was in a position to comment. Sir Christopher Lee is that all too rare face of intelligence and objectivity.
I tried to enjoy SF after my initial enthusiasm died a death. But, it is a less satisfying experience than QOS. Craig was in his element and a shame that critics like Mark Kermode of the BBC by misunderstanding QOS, changed EON's direction once again. Marc Forster deserves an apology!
Regarding Dalton, I am not old enough to recall the reviews for LTK at the time of its release, but I don't think he set the world on fire with TLD to begin with. It was seen as serviceable from what I've read after the fact, and perhaps on par with SP in the way it was being looked at. Namely, decent, somewhat formulaic, but not earth shaking. Craig did have the benefit of CR to ride him through.
I think it is Dalton's first outing that should have been stronger commercially. It was one of the weaker showings stateside anyway for a Bond actor's first film. There are many reasons for that, including a changing film landscape in the US, but still, EON didn't catch the wave properly with TLD which had one eye on the past......that is not Dalton's fault. They did a far better job with CR and Craig benefited from that, and I believe that helped him to ride out QoS, while Dalton was not forgiven so easily for LTK. Keep in mind, I personally think both are excellent work.....I'm referring to mass appeal.
I think other than the famous "juries still out" from Barry Norman I recall Dalton being warmly received for TLD and a sigh of relief from some fans that we didn't get more of the same in Brosnan.
The audience and anticipation for LTK seemed to evaporate though. There were too many other big franchise films out to devote any column space to Bond. As Dalton himself said LTK was a leap in a different direction. A great film but too much too soon for the audience.
TB, LTK, TLD, and CR (minus the blonde hair) too.
There was a general consensus that Craig was too serious. One reviewer equalled his performance in QOS "as miserable as Dalton".
Our most famous BBC critic Mark Kermode thought it was a Jason Statham film and had no plot.
It is no secret that the Dalton era was badly marketed. Bond had been going for twenty five years and had been taken for granted. The decline had slowly begun in the 1980's before Dalton took over. The American media wanted Brosnan and that informed the public of their attitude to Dalton. In the 80's the American media were far more influential than today. People believed what they were told just like "The weapons of mass destruction" that Iraq had.
But TLD in the UK and Europe did very well. Dalton was hailed as the new Connery in some circles.
And to take over after 12 years of the Moore era was a tough petition for a new Bond embarking on a completely different and uncharted style.
The big gaps work better in introducing a new Bond. Brosnan 6 years after Dalton and Craig 4 years after Brosnan.
The irony of the Bond franchise is that the closer you are to the creation of Fleming's books, the more you are hated. Eventually the steam will run out as you can only use a cliche so much.
Case in point, some scenes in SP could easily have had Brosnan in the part. What was the point in rebooting to come back to what we have already had before? Now Bond stopped bleeding after a severe beating on the train. A big misstep after the excellent stairwell fight in CR. Shame really, because the Quantum story arc was excellent as an idea, which disappeared in SF.
As Mark Gatiss put it, Dalton is the connoisseurs Bond. You have to know the roots of the character to fully appreciate his work. But we are less well read as a society. There are many ways to playing Bond, yet we are still straight-jacketed to the formula of old and that has finite sustainability in a fast changing culture of now.
You can be a student of Fleming and not like Dalton.
Way too simplistic view of the American audience.
No you don't what? Your answer is no answer. Too stiff? What does that mean???
My view of America I admit is not the highest. I won't even comment on their foreign policy or this continuing idea that American box office is more important than the rest of the world.
You are from Texas? I am sure the Mexicans would love that back!